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Customer Service: Set Your eCommerce Business Up For Success In 2021.

Choosing the Right Platform for Your eCommerce Store

Building the Ideal eCommerce Team Structure. 

what to read next.

No matter how hard you work to scale your eCommerce business, you’ll likely encounter obstacles along the way.

With a competitive landscape, the eCommerce space is not easy to scale and succeed in. However, with the right factors considered, an effective growth strategy in place and a robust eCommerce platform to support you, you’ll be well on your way.

the barriers we regularly see stunt eCommerce growth

the obstacles you may encounter along the way

Your platform choice is a big part of success. It needs to be the right choice for your business now and for the future. The features, functionalities and ability to scale all play a key role in fulfilling your growth plans. Without the best platform for your needs, your ongoing success could be stunted.

choosing the right platform for your eCommerce store

It’s better to have an eCommerce platform that’s able to support your needs today as well as in the future. With room to grow, you won’t be limited by your choice.

Consider questions like these to help you make your decision:

What shopping experience do you want to offer your customers?

What functionality do you need your eCommerce store to have?

How quickly do you want to get to market?

Where do you want your online business to be in the next five years?

What aspirations do you have for your online store?

Will there be any major changes such as internationalisation?

What support does your platform choice offer? Some platforms outsource their support which can make it tricky to get the help you need when you need it. If something goes wrong, it’s reassuring to know you can contact a real person whether it’s through email, phone or live chat.

Will your platform be able to handle high traffic demands? What about the ability to cope with different currencies or language options if you expand into new markets?

Your chosen platform should be robust enough to handle traffic influxes without your site crashing and going offline. It should also be capable of supporting your ambitions, whatever they may be.

Your eCommerce platform needs to protect both your brand and your customers. Most solutions today offer comprehensive security standards. However, it’s important to know if you’re responsible for maintaining these security processes or whether they’re looked after by the platform provider.

A payment gateway acts as the bridge between the customer and brand, allowing online payments to be made in a secure, fast manner.

Aim to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay for your products or services. Using well-known, trustworthy providers such as 

If you can’t fulfil your orders with ease, your sales will suffer. The eCommerce shopping experience may take place online but there’s much more than just the sale to consider. How will you get your products from you to your customer quickly and efficiently?

Factors including poor inventory management, shipping delays, miscommunications and warehousing issues can all affect your fulfilment process. Ensuring your logistics and operations are as slick as your online store will help you to meet your customers’ expectations as your business grows. Internal systems and third-party relationships all need to be spot on to ensure the process is as seamless as possible.

Whether it’s third-party systems, payment gateways or internal systems, poor integrations can cause problems including:

the risk of overselling due to problem syncing of stock levels

order management syncing causing slow delivery times

These issues can impact the performance and success of your eCommerce store causing damage to the shopping experience, your brand’s reputation and sales. Top-quality, reliable integrations are essential for a high-performing store. Here’s an example of some of the integrations you will likely encounter on your growth journey:

To manage data and customer relationships

To manage data and technical site elements

social proof and user generated content (UGC)

To offer rewards and incentives for purchasing

To create a more intuitive buying journey

To allow your audience to easily communicate with you

To grow, you need to acquire new customers. This starts with understanding who your audience is, what matters to them and how you can best communicate with them.

It’s not as simple as just launching an eCommerce store. If no one knows your site exists, how will you generate sales? For your online store to perform, you need to drive traffic to it.

Your wider marketing strategy should factor this in including where you will find your customers, what they will be searching for and how you can reach them at different stages of their buying journey. When putting your acquisition strategy together, consider the different channels that could be used:

SEO helps search engines crawl, index, rank and display your site for relevant searches. However, it takes a multitude of tactics to grow your organic presence - from technical SEO to content to increasing your domain authority with outreach and digital PR.

PPC provides more immediate visibility than SEO and is a great tactic to use while your organic presence grows (and beyond). Allowing you to compete with established brands faster, PPC boosts your visibility in the SERPs and can be used to drive traffic to your site.

Social channels are the place for building communities and establishing connections with your audience. These platforms are effective for showing who you are, what you stand for and what you offer in a more visually engaging way. Paid social can also be used to target more of your audience, grow your following and encourage communication through a convenient customer touchpoint.

A faithful marketing method, as your database continues to grow, email is an effective way of connecting directly with your audience. Even better, it has a range of uses including supporting customer service, gathering social proof, promoting new products, shouting about promotions and supporting customer loyalty.


customers who had the best experience communicating with a brand spend approximately 140 percent more

 compared to those who didn’t. Good customer service is not only important for serving your customers, but it can also support your sales.

Between proactive communication of product availability, delivery timescales, processing orders and refunds, answering queries and handling complaints, your customer service is key to both keeping your customers happy and turning them into loyal shoppers.

The pandemic has seen more people turn online for their shopping needs and, for many, these transactions have been their first online shopping experience. To support their shopping journey and earn their loyalty, it’s important to provide familiarity through your customer service processes. This means translating traditional customer service into the digital space.

This isn’t just about supporting new shoppers. Today, customers expect convenience and fast responses through a range of channels. It’s important to make your brand available where your customers want to speak to you whether that’s phone, email, live chat, social or a good old fashioned contact form.

 will also work closely with your fulfilment team to coordinate orders and returns efficiently. As such, it’s crucial to 

build an effective eCommerce team structure

 and streamlined internal processes that ensure these activities can be carried out in the most seamless, speedy way.

Are your growth plans being hampered by your eCommerce platform? If your ambition is to scale, you need a platform that can support you well into the future.

As an eCommerce agency founded by an eCommerce business

, our roots are in retail, and this means we understand the barriers that can prevent you from scaling. From our experience starting as an online retailer, Shopify fast became our platform of choice.

The right choice for high growth retailers, 

Shopify Plus is designed for ambitious merchants

. With world-class technology, this platform empowers you to succeed. But the real potential is unlocked when you combine it with a Shopify expert agency. 

, you can invest in the right platform for now and for the future.

common barriers to ecommerce growth.

Gifting: Are You Ready for Peak?

How Shopify Scripts Can Maximise Bundling for Peak Trading.

Preparing For Peak Trading with COVID-19.

Last year, we knew that peak was going to be different with the pandemic accelerating eCommerce trends two-fold. But despite rolling lockdowns and global hardships, 

2020 proved to be the most successful Shopify peak season to date

76 percent increase in global sales from 2019

50 percent more customers bought from Shopify merchants compared to 2019

Sales peaked at over $102 million at midday on Black Friday

Average time to checkout decreased by one minute

But that was last year, and our attention is now laser-focused on 2021’s peak shopping season. Reflecting on how businesses adapted, how customers responded and what this means for this year and beyond, we’re sharing insight into how you can get your Shopify store ready for peak trading.

how to prepare your store for the heightened demand

why communicating with your audience before peak is so important

how to integrate your peak plan with other channels

how Shopify can help you make the most of peak

If you haven’t done so already, it’s high time you began your peak preparations. The busiest trading time of the year, BFCM and Christmas shopping can put a strain on your customer experience if you’re not well prepared.

Dan Conboy, MD at Statement, gave his thoughts on what Q4 could have in store for us this year and why it’s essential to prepare:

“Q4 provides a key opportunity for retailers and can often be the key to a successful year - or not. 2021 will likely prove to be one to watch - there’ll be the assessment of how trends this Q4 change compared to last year with the impact of the pandemic, but also the potential consumer boom (or otherwise…) as the economy (hopefully) looks to stabilise as we move back towards some normality.

Retail is rarely predictable and the last 18 months has shown that now, more than ever, it’s difficult to fully envisage what is set to happen. What businesses can do is prepare now and consider the different strategies they can adopt to maximise potential and minimise risk through continued uncertainty.”

Now is the time to clearly define your goals and the steps you’ll take to reach them. Here are some of the top considerations you need to consider in your peak plan:

A good place to start is by looking at last year’s performance. While it’s likely changes will occur this year, by analysing your previous data, you will be able to form a better picture of what to expect and where to focus your efforts for the best return. Consider possible trends for best selling products and when they experienced high sales demand.

It’s worth looking at which channels are driving traffic to your best sellers. Is it paid, social media, email, organic? Doing so will allow you to use this channel to drive maximum traffic to the areas you want.

Without enough stock, peak trading is set to be a bust. Using data and an understanding of what your audience is interested in, you can source the right products in the right quantities.

Promotions are the backbone of BFCM. Everyone expects a deal. Promotions, events and discounts should be considered during the planning phase. What discount is both affordable to you and attractive to your customers? Have you created marketing collateral to promote your offers? Which channels are you going to advertise them on?

 plays a big role in peak success and can help you stand out from the competition, especially during busy periods. Even better, it can also drive conversions and long-lasting customer loyalty. But don’t forget that your people are just that - people. Peak season doesn’t just put pressure on your eCommerce store, it can put pressure on your team too. It’s important to spend time preparing them on what to expect, ensuring enough staff are available to cater for your customers and that everyone’s aware of peak promotions, stock availability and delivery timescales.

The sooner you plan, the more time you’ll have to firm up your strategies and prepare for success. Fortunately, the Shopify platform is built to handle large loads such as the peak shopping season and they take extra precautions to ensure their servers don’t fall short.

Slow site speed, high bounce rates and frustrated users – poor site performance can be detrimental to your peak success. Optimising your site’s performance ahead of the shopping rush will keep your customers converting and helps to prevent site crashes.

Without a reliable platform, the seasonal traffic surge can slow down or even cause your site to crash. Tests should be run in advance to ensure your store can handle peak shopping loads.

One of the top issues during busy periods are slow pages. Research shows that 

93 percent of shoppers have left a website because it didn’t load fast enough

. With figures like these, speeding up your site could make a huge impact on your conversions. Even better, you can use 

 to calculate how your conversion rates could be improved by faster site speeds.

Getting your site navigation and search functionality in the best shape possible will help customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. With predictive site search, you can guide shoppers to the goods they want. 

 can considerably improve the onsite customer experience.

The holiday season is prime time for hackers to target vulnerable sites. Prevent fraud from taking hold with an 

. Using a Flow template can save you money and time spent looking for fraudulent orders. Once added to your Shopify store, emails will be sent prompting a review of high-risk orders before capturing payment to ensure you’re always aware of suspicious activity.

Google’s page speed analysis tool allows you to drill down into performance issues to see what’s causing the problem. 

 can be run against any webpage and provides audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO and more.All you have to do is provide the tool with a URL to audit and a report is generated on the quality of that page containing references on how to fix the issue(s).

During the peak shopping season, customers are often in a rush to get their shopping done. The more painless you can make your checkout process gives shoppers yet another reason to love your brand and ensures they reach conversion faster.

One way to do this is by letting shoppers skip to the cart and checkout without leaving the page they’re browsing. Using 

 places a customer’s preferred and trusted payment method through a super-fast checkout process on the product page.

Dynamic checkout buttons are great for busy shopping periods when customers want to convert fast. Checkout buttons can be third-party branded such as ‘Buy with Apple Pay’ or unbranded such as ‘Buy it now’.

In the competitive eCommerce world, how do you stand out and gain the trust of your customers? Social proof. Social proof can come in the form of reviews, images, video, testimonials and social media posts.

Now is the time to start collating this social proof and sharing it across your own digital platforms. Your website is a brilliant place to display social proof with some brands such as ASOS even using real-life customers on their product pages.

Social proof continues to be one of the most persuasive and effective methods of influencing a shopper into buying a product. To encourage your audience to provide their own social proof, why not offer them an incentive such as a 5 percent discount if they write a review. Or encourage them to tag your social account or use a community hashtag to get more people to see your brand.

If you want more tricks and insights into how to use social proof to generate more sales, take a read of our blog: 

social proof in ecommerce: what is it and why do you need it?

Preparing for large sales events can be stressful and challenging. These stresses only increase two-fold when you consider how many different sales events, promotions and discounts run through the course of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas Shopping and Boxing Day Sales.

This year, you can save your team a whole lot of trouble and those late nights by using an automated promotional tool. eCommerce automation can schedule, execute and monitor events such as sales, product releases, restocks and changes to site content.

Fortunately, Shopify has a range of tools designed to take the strain out of busy sales events. Between 

, tasks can be automated and time saved to increase efficiency and productivity. Freeing up your valuable time, you can place more focus on strategy adjustments based on real-time insights to drive more revenue.

Using Shopify to automate front and back end workflows will not only save your team precious time but also make your customer’s experience easy and fast.

Don’t leave it until the day your promotions kick-off to start communicating with your audience. This should begin well in advance of peak shopping events to build anticipation with your customers.

 is ideal to help you do just this. Make it known onsite that Wishlist is available to encourage customers to ‘love’ the products they’re interested in. Doing this will allow you to email customers if one of their desired products is discounted.

Another idea is to encourage site visitors to sign up for upcoming deals without giving away what those deals will be. This approach can be used to engage with users before they’ve even shopped with your brand. An exclusive pre-sale could be run for those who sign up, providing visitors with access to stock first before it runs out.

Not only is it important to ensure your website is prepared for peak, but you should also define your wider marketing plan to capitalise on the increase of people searching for products.

Paid media, email and social platforms are all effective channels to engage with your audience. Take a read of our top considerations to build momentum and drive traffic to your site ahead of peak:

With more people than ever before shopping online, opportunities are rife to engage with an even bigger online audience during this peak season. However, increased demand also means other businesses will be more aggressive with their promotional techniques which is why it’s so important to prepare your PPC campaigns now.

It’s worth analysing last year’s performance to give you a steer on this year’s decisions. Consider which products sold well, which pages were most visited, which messaging and promotions resonated best with your audience. Jump into your Google Analytics account to understand which landing pages were most popular so they can be optimised.

One thing customers are guaranteed to look for during peak trading is a good deal. Once you’ve decided what promotions you want to run, it’s time to start promoting those promotions! Your promos form the backbone of your digital marketing and will influence your onsite messaging, ad copy, imagery and even social media calendar. You’re looking to attract people with a deal so it’s important to start telling them about them prior to peak beginning.

 Remarketing ads can target previous website visitors to encourage them to return and convert with you. Past visitors can be targeted through remarketing lists while bids can be increased for the most valuable customers. Remarketing is often cost-effective as you already have a list of leads available to use. This means purchase intent is higher, cost per click is lower and messaging can be directed towards the right person at the right time.

If you want further guidance on how to make the most of paid media during peak, our connected specialist paid media agency, equation, wrote a blog on the topic: 

preparing for peak: what do you need to consider?

Emails are still top when it comes to engaging your audience. The customer data you gather can be used to target individuals with relevant emails based on products they’ve shown interest in on the run-up to peak. As your audience will no doubt be inundated with emails, it’s important to ensure yours stands out:

Peak shopping season is a good time to capture additional customer data for future use too. Use incentives such as a 10 percent discount to encourage people to subscribe. Not only can you enjoy a boost in conversions ahead of peak, but you can even use the data to build up your email marketing list.

Your subject lines are the first thing your audience will see when it comes to your emails. Make sure your subject lines are concise, engaging and clearly state the offer that’s up for grabs. Consider 

A/B testing your subject lines as this can help you understand what performs best

In the peak shopping frenzy, customers will likely browse numerous websites and place multiple items in their shopping carts. In many cases, these carts will be abandoned as the shopper is distracted by another product or promotion. Email can draw them back to you and encourage conversion. An additional promotional incentive could also be used.

Designing emails that your subscribers want to open and click on can be challenging. A well-designed optimised email is essential for driving engagement with your audience to generate a higher ROI. A whole topic in itself, 

take a read of this blog from email marketing experts and connected agency, Wired Plus

 to learn more about designing emails that engage.

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools today. Able to engage, communicate and promote your business far and wide, there are many platforms that can be used to support your peak trading season.

 Social proof such as reviews, testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) can drive awareness, build trust and convert users into loyal customers. 

UGC in particular is great for both your eCommerce store and social media. Content that your audience has already created and posted featuring your products can be reshared (with permission) to your brand’s accounts. This is a tactic we deployed for 

 which helped them promote how effective their products really are with the use of real-life customers.

Once you’ve settled on those all-important promotions and sales events, it’s important to advertise them. Social media channels are effective for building excitement around an event. Through the use of stories, polls, regular posts and communications with your audience, you can get more people interested in your promotions before they even launch.

Many social platforms today offer their own, native shopping functionality built into the app. Providing your customs with more than one place to shop makes the purchasing and conversion process even easier. In fact, 

130 million Instagram users click on shopping posts every month

 highlighting just how popular they’ve become. Selling products directly within the app allows customers to browse, research, engage and convert all in one place. Fortunately, Shopify has a whole range of 

 including ones for social media channels such as 

A common issue merchants struggle with during busy shopping periods is coping with the big influx in traffic. As a hosted platform, Shopify means your store is built to handle peak performance all year round.

Thanks to Shopify’s infrastructure, the platform is a secure and reliable option for eCommerce stores – this is one of the main reasons brands choose to switch to them. Fast and dependable with unlimited bandwidth and 99.9 percent average uptime means you can rest easy knowing your site is performing at its best during the busiest time of the year.

As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, Shopify takes care of the technology so you can focus on your business. Always striving to maximise stores powered by Shopify, they continuously improve server-side performance such as hosting, security and stability.

Make the most of the peak shopping period with a post-peak plan. With so many incentives, promotions and sales events flying around, this isn’t just a chance to drive revenue. Peak can be beneficial for your business into the new year and beyond.

By avoiding site slowdowns, connecting your customers to the products they want and letting them checkout fast, your sales are set to soar this peak season. To find out how we can support you in driving your best peak performance so far, 

get in touch with our team of eCommerce experts

get ready for peak trading.

Selecting The Right eCommerce Agency For Your Business.

Proactive Support For Your Ongoing Success.

Is Your Shopify Site Performance Getting You Down?

As an eCommerce agency, it’s our mission to help you get the most out of your Shopify store.

We believe in providing a proactive service – both during your project and after your website has launched. Our research and the recommendations we provide form 

a solution that consistently supports you in meeting your eCommerce ambitions

As part of this support, we focus on UX-led improvements and use conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to gain further insight and test the impact. CRO helps form a deeper understanding of your shopper’s pain points and what they really want from your brand when shopping online.

In this blog, you’ll find out all about:

how CRO can help you make the most of your Shopify store

the four step CRO process our clients follow

But first, what do we mean when we talk about UX-led improvements?

Workshops, focus groups and user data are regularly used to analyse onsite behaviour. Translating this research into recommendations can inform improvements to the information architecture (IA) and UX design of your website.

Changes and additions can then be implemented to make your Shopify store even better. Whether that’s to your design or functionality, Shopify Flow automation, content placement, USP promotion, navigation or signposting.

Taking this approach to your website allows us to take a proactive support approach and implement UX-led improvements. But, to get even more from your Shopify store, we draw upon the expertise of 

our specialist connected agency, equation

Driving a high volume of relevant and targeted traffic to your eCommerce store is important, but it’s only half the battle. It doesn’t matter how many users you attract if you have a poor conversion rate. You need to convert that traffic into customers.

We regularly see brands spend time and money building an impressive looking website, only to find their conversion rates are still low.

While engaging graphics and high-quality imagery create a visually pleasing site, they don’t always translate to a good user experience. Regardless of how your site looks, it really comes down to what your customers want.

The CRO concept is to convert as many of your users as possible by making sure each part of your store is curated to maximise conversions. In its simplest form, CRO is designed to optimise your eCommerce website for sales.

Implementing an effective CRO strategy helps to make your website more targeted towards your audience to capture the attention of those high intent buyers.

CRO helps you get the most from your eCommerce investment

. Not only can it influence how many people convert, but also their shopping journey, what products they may be interested in and their average order value.

There are number of reasons why you may want to invest in CRO including:

optimise the checkout process
Or, quite simply, because you just want to sell more!

The insight gleaned from our UX and CRO services can be used to improve the overall performance of your eCommerce store, allowing you to make informed decisions on future changes.

Numerous factors can contribute to conversions. But a major one is how well your customers understand your store and what you are selling. This is one of the biggest cons of eCommerce stores when compared to brick-and-mortar.

Shoppers can’t physically see, feel and inspect your products when browsing online. It’s your responsibility to make them want to shop with you through an intuitive, frictionless and simple user journey.

As more and more users have flooded online to get their shopping fix, creating high performing eCommerce experiences has never been so important. CRO technical account manager at equation, Luke McDermott, shared insight into some of the eCommerce features that have become even more important in the last year:

“There are a few things we’ve seen become more important over the last year. Firstly, transparency. Customers want information to help them make their purchasing decision. They’re on your website for a reason so make it easier for them to buy from you by sharing delivery times, USPs and stock updates.

Another key point is that images are important, but they’re not everything. On a large percentage of product detail pages tests we’ve ran, we found that reducing image sizes by 20%-30% and filling this space with other elements such as price and delivery times helps to improve performance. Big images aren’t always the answer!”

CRO is a proven technique. If you want to optimise your website for more conversions, there are a number of strategies that can be used for different areas of your site. When applied correctly, these tactics can create a positive impact on your bottom line:

Wanting to increase their online sales, a renowned British furniture retailer used CRO to improve their user experience. In a test example, a filtering and colour tiling system was introduced to make navigation of certain product pages easier.

A leading contemporary furniture brand known for quality designs wanted to test landing page optimisation on specific products in a bid to:

CRO was implemented for five product landing pages which focused on dimensions and usability, use of colour, default images, page length, CTA and recommended products. Two variants were created to measure efficiency and a 

We spoke to Luke McDermott, CRO technical account manager, to learn more about the equation way to CRO.

Their four-step process is commercially driven to make the most of your website, optimise traffic and increase conversions. Here are the four key steps they take clients through:

Where are the opportunities to increase conversion rates? During the first phase, research is conducted to identify exactly how you can increase your conversions.

A range of quantitative and qualitative research methods are used to generate an understanding of why customers do what they do on your site. This then allows us to spot barriers that are preventing them from making a purchase. Research methods include:

 Illustrate the most and least engaged with parts of the website.

 Highlight the user journeys onsite to spot UX and technical issues.

 Gather real-time feedback on popular topics and categories.

 Analyse performance on different device and operating systems.

 Report on metrics and functionality tailored towards client needs.

Analyse demographic data and the impact on AOV, sessions etc.

Gain greater insight into how users interact with specific web elements.

Exclusive to our connected CRO agency, equation, is their Landing Page Opportunity (LPO) tool. This tool algorithmically identifies where CRO could generate performance uplifts by analysing where bounce rates, conversion rates and sessions are underperforming. Often, the LPO tool highlights key opportunities for page restructure and redesigns to improve conversion points.

This insight fuels the next stage in the process: create. Combining analysis with UX best practice, our CRO experts create a series of visual, bespoke mock-up wireframes.

These wireframes are designed to strengthen the weaknesses that were identified on your website and are tailored to opportunities identified by our UX specialists. Once created, they are shared with you to show exactly how the improvements will look and provide an opportunity for feedback before development.

Our aim is to test the impact of the improvements before lasting changes are made. Once the designs are approved, the next step is to develop your landing pages.

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